


banana boat

by backdoor (symmetrophobic)



Series: with me now (and forever) [3]
Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Gen, M/M, thanks felix, this story was born because i thought about baby felix singing banana boat, woochanlix family!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:40:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23094184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/symmetrophobic/pseuds/backdoor
Summary: This time, though, Felix points at Woojin, still giggling. “Banana boat.”The four-year-old says all kinds of things at the most random times, so this is no surprise to Woojin. Whatisa surprise to Woojin is the way Chan repeats the phrase, and continues the song.“Fun sun protection.”“What’s going on,” Woojin asks, feeling a bit left out.“Banana boat.”“It lasts four hours, and hours, and hours-…”
Relationships: Bang Chan & Lee Felix, Bang Chan/Kim Woojin, Kim Woojin & Lee Felix
Series: with me now (and forever) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589818
Comments: 15
Kudos: 184





	banana boat

**Author's Note:**

> caution: 98% of all australia-related content in this fic was taken from tripadvisor 

Sometimes Woojin feels like he’s part of a family and sometimes he feels like he’s part of a conspiracy theory.

“_How_ are all the children’s lessons on the nights when I can’t make it?” Chan bemoans, shuffling through a stack of flyers. Woojin, in the interest of preserving this marriage, does not voice his observation that Chan cannot make anything on most nights, thanks to his hectic work schedule and overwhelming passion for his craft.

Instead, he sighs, rubbing his eyes and sorely wishing Chan would just go to bed with him. It’s Friday night, Felix is fast asleep in his room, and Woojin is really looking forward to the _sleeping in_ part of tomorrow morning. “You know, Channie, maybe it isn’t all that _bad_ if Felix doesn’t know how to swim…”

When he opens his eyes, Chan is looking at him like he’s grown an extra head, and Woojin hastily retracts his statement. “Okay, fine. Then how about _I_ take him to class?”

“But what if the instructor’s some slipshod fraud who won’t teach Lixie the right things?” Chan frets, looking through the flyers again. Woojin sniffs, offended at Chan’s implication that he doesn’t know enough about swimming to be able to tell the difference, then offended at himself when he realises it’s true. “He _has_ to learn! He’s already almost five, kids his age right now in Sydney are probably learning their third stroke, I-…”

“…-was born into a swimming pool, yes yes,” Woojin presses a finger into his temple. _God_, he can’t even begin to imagine how much worse this would be if Chan were born on the Gold Coast, or something. “Look, Channie, it’s late,” he hooks a finger into the other man’s shirt and tugs, leaning over and nuzzling into his husband’s shoulder sleepily, a tactic reserved only for desperate times. “Let’s go to bed and talk about this tomorrow.”

As usual, Chan follows Woojin’s pull, with an absent-minded look on his face this time, even as the other man flicks off the living room lights, relief flooding his chest.

“I guess that leaves us with no choice,” the Aussie says with a note of stoic reluctance, and Woojin snorts as he rolls into bed, pulling Chan with him. “There’s only one thing to do now.”

Woojin pulls Chan close, sufficiently tired that he lets his guard down enough for Chan’s next words to pull the rug out under his feet.

“I’m going to have to teach Felix how to swim.”

The other man buries his face into the pillow and sighs loudly.

*

There are some parts about (somehow) _both_ Felix and Chan being insufferably Australian that are beneficial. The Tim-Tams and Rocky Road Mallows, for one – Woojin had accidentally finished half a packet on his own while powering through his curriculum for the semester.

The complaints about prices of fresh dairy here, violent and pointed shivering once the air-conditioning temperature dips below twenty-three degrees Celsius, and near magnetic attraction to sunlight, he can handle. That’s fine. He’s a strong man. Plus, he’d actually learnt a lot of English, though he learnt the hard way that some words were exclusively Australian.

(“Chan, what exactly does _cunt_ mean, and why do you say it all the time when you’re Facetiming your friends in Sydney?”)

But some things are just better Korean.

Woojin looks up, expression point blank. “I’m not going to eat it, Chan.”

“Come _on_, just a bite,” Chan croons, waving the piece of toast, complete with the hell jam from that black bottle and sunshine yellow cap smeared over the top, clearly in a good mood. “See, even Felix likes it!”

Felix looks up from where he’s seated at his booster seat, a piece of toast held in both hands, entire lower half of his face smeared with the brown, tar-like substance. Then, he tears a piece of toast off with his teeth like an apex predator, chewing and watching his toast with a thoughtful frown.

Woojin knows that frown. It’s the _how do I stuff more of this food into my mouth when I’m still chewing _frown. He sighs.

“Chan,” he says steadily. _How do I say “Vegemite is soybean paste from hell” without Chan using it as grounds for divorce?_ “I don’t like Vegemite.”

“You’ve never tried it!”

“I have. Several times. You made me.”

“When-…? Oh, when we were dating,” Chan squints suspiciously. “You were just tolerating it because you wanted to impress me, weren’t you?”

“Oh dear,” Woojin’s unable to hold back a smile, especially when Felix is singing a song he’s made up on the spot about Vegemite. “I’ve been found out.”

Chan rolls his eyes, huffing, and Woojin takes his free hand, threading their fingers so their hands bump against Chan’s thigh. “Well, fine, if you won’t eat it like this, you can try it mixed with butter and toast. Or in porridge,” he takes a bite of the toast in his hand, sniffing. “The _vanilla _version.”

Woojin smiles faintly, letting go of Chan’s hand to press his thumb into a specific spot on the other man’s hip, other fingers kneading gently. “And you _hate_ taking it vanilla, don’t you?”

The other man pinches his ear and pushes him away lightly, before turning and heading into the kitchen, walking unusually fast.

It’s not before Felix scuttles into the kitchen holding his plate, presumably for a second helping, and asks in passing: “_Daddy, why is your face so red?”_, that Woojin finally bursts out laughing.

*

_Your skin is so healthy_, people tell Woojin on the daily. _You must do sports in the sun all the time._

But no, the extra melanin is entirely genetics and zero exposure. Chan and Felix, with their vampire pale skin, on the other hand-…

“Appa, _hurry_,” Felix tugs on Woojin’s leg with both hands (no small feat for someone who barely comes up to waist height), and the man grumbles, stuffing their bag into a keypad locker.

He’d been both dreading and secretly hoping that Felix wouldn’t take to the swimming lessons as much as Chan wanted him to (though really, could he deny Chan?) but as it turns out, Felix is as much a fish in water as Chan is, and had spent his entire first morning at the club pool splashing about in delight.

Felix is giggling as he clambers into the training pool now, the sound making Woojin melt all over again, and he sighs, handing the boy his training board. Obediently, Felix dons his navy blue Minions goggles and starts paddling away, diligently working on the training sets Chan had instructed him to do.

This leaves Woojin standing in waist-high, freezing water under the burning sun, surrounded by elementary-schoolers doing training circuits, feeling very much useless and very cold.

_Wow_, he hates the outdoors.

He’s standing there, thinking of all the ways he could try to convince Felix to take Kendo classes instead, when someone claps a hand down on his shoulder, making him jump in the frigid water.

“_Fuck_, Chan,” he hisses, shivering slightly, and the other man laughs. _One day_, Woojin tells himself firmly. _One day I’m going to be able to hear either of them laugh and not turn into absolute jelly._

“You forgot the sunblock,” Chan tells him plainly, dragging him to the side of the pool again. Woojin blinks, running through the entire procedure in his head wildly. He’d changed Felix out, put on sunblock, given him his goggles and training board, instructed him not to run on the wet floor or go to the adult pool without him – he’d _definitely_ remembered the sunblock.

“As in, for yourself, dummy,” the other man laughs, opening the tube of sunblock and squeezing some out onto his palm. “Don’t move, or you’re going to end up with a really ridiculous T-shirt burn.”

“Mmh,” Woojin grumbles. He’s still staring out into the pool, and Chan must be able to feel the tension in his back as he puts the sunblock on because he laughs again.

“He’s doing _fine_. Look at him, he’s enjoying himself. And you know the water’s not deep enough to go over his head here, you only checked about a hundred times.”

In the distance, Felix splashes away happily with his training board, now swimming from the other end of the pool back towards them. Woojin has to admit, he does look happy.

By the time Chan’s slathered a satisfactory amount of sunblock onto Woojin, Felix is back, abandoning his board in favour of moonwalking towards them, little head bobbing above the water.

“Good run Lixie, you’re getting faster and faster every day,” Chan hoists Felix out of the water, hugging him playfully, and Felix laughs again.

This time, though, Felix points at Woojin, still giggling. “Banana boat.”

Felix says all kinds of things at the most random timings, so this is no surprise to Woojin. What _is_ a surprise to Woojin is the way Chan repeats the phrase, _and_ continues the song. “_Fun sun protection_.”

“What’s going on,” Woojin asks, feeling a bit left out.

“_Banana boat.”_

_“It lasts four hours, and hours, and hours-…”_

Woojin’s mind is going in all sorts of directions, based on the limited English he can understand, when he finally glances down at the tube of sunscreen in his hand. _Oh_.

By this time, though, Chan is in the process of teaching Felix a new stroke, paddling further away.

Sighing, Woojin weighs the pros and cons of going up to play Candy Crush on his phone until they’re done.

*

_If you want to figure out a man_, Woojin’s cousin Lia once told him a few years ago, sometime after five pints of maekju between them. _Look at the way he eats_.

Which was pretty stupid in hindsight, Woojin thought, as he scraped out the remainders of some cold day-old tuna kimbap in the fridge to unsuccessfully cure his hangover the next morning, unshaven and exhausted, but when you were two bottles of soju in on an empty stomach, lots more things made sense.

Woojin is the type of person who, if left undisturbed, would eat the same thing every day at work: a medium kimchi stew with extra chicken and cabbage, with half a bowl of rice and cold barley tea for lunch from the fifth stall at the cafeteria on a staff 20% discount.

It wasn’t that he didn’t look at a roadside food advertisement every now and then and salivate – he just didn’t feel that the benefits of trying new things outweighed the risks enough for him to do it without someone telling him to.

Chan, on the other hand, has a near magnetic attraction to new things. He’s not averse to the idea of routine, as many might mistakenly think – he’s just a lot more open to the idea of something different.

“It’s okay,” Chan coaxes, a bright smile on his face, arms open. Felix is wobbling like one of those sticky jelly figurines on the playground tightrope, something he’s never tried before, holding onto the rope above for dear life, higher than usual because this was built for kids a lot older than him. Woojin is a few paces away, trying to stand like he isn’t perpetually vibrating with anxiety.

Felix loves climbing on these rope playgrounds and pyramids as much as the next little boy does, but Woojin has never been a fan of pushing people’s limits when it comes to their hobbies. Chan, on the other hand…

“You’re doing a great job, baby,” he says, with all the gusto of a personal motivational coach. “Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.”

One moment, Felix seems to be getting the hang of it, and the next, his tiny sneaker slips on a bit of sand on the rope and he all but slides off.

In a split second, Chan catches him and hoists him up, laughing reassuringly, and Woojin tries to get over his mini cardiac arrest. “It’s okay. Let’s try again.”

Felix shakes his head, whining and eyeing the tightrope warily. There’s a couple of older kids thundering over, and Woojin has half a mind to call it quits, let Felix go play with something else.

“One more try,” Chan bargains, kissing Felix’s cheek. “Then we’ll go play with the zipline again. Okay baby?”

And Woojin watches, not quite understanding, as Chan puts Felix on the rope again, nearer the end this time, and proceeds to coach him through the rest of it.

He doesn’t like to think that _new_ is something difficult for him, because it isn’t. It’s simple: he just doesn’t do it.

Because after a childhood spent walking on eggshells, five years of an alcohol problem, four ex-girlfriends, falling out with some friends and giving up on others, Woojin’s somehow finally done it. Somehow managed to get it right, somehow stumbled into his own perfect slice of the universe.

_New_ isn’t difficult.

It’s suicide.

*

It takes half a year of planning to synchronise their schedules, but they finally make it for a year-end trip to Australia to visit Chan’s family.

“Mom’s been asking to see Felix again for _months_,” Chan says happily, trying to zip shut a suitcase full of Korean snacks and ramen. He’s been in a good mood for the past week, talking about bringing Felix to all his favourite spots as a child, and seeing the beach, and to an open-concept zoo.

Felix is just as excited. He doesn’t remember much about Australia, of course, he’d only been just over 3 when he’d left, but he tends to get happy about whatever Chan’s happy about. It’s undoubtedly a wonderful sight to see.

So Woojin nods along, packs some extra sunblock and caps and prays it won’t be too sunny.

*

It is very sunny.

Woojin burns miserably in the garden as they carry their things up the front steps. It looks mostly the same as when he’d visited a couple of years back. Felix, swathed in Chan’s arms, is swarmed by his fanclub once they’re through the doors – Chan’s sister Hannah leads the charge, his parents not too far behind.

Everything is bright and loud and English, happening around Woojin as he tries his best to affirm again, non-verbally, that he has been a very good husband for Chan for the past three years. They have lunch, but the rice and the kimchi and the seaweed all taste _different_.

Everything is different.

“There are lots of great places to eat around here,” Chan’s mother says, when they’re all settled around the living room before dinner afterwards, while Felix naps in Chan’s old room. Apparently this is something Woojin’s supposed to hear, because she says it in Korean.

“That’s nice,” is all Woojin feels equipped to say.

He wishes he were funny. He wishes he could talk as well as Chan does, like Chan’s friend Jackson did even when he barely knew any Korean, wishes he was a part of whatever wonderfully funny secret the rest of Chan’s family seemed to be in on whenever he came to visit.

He sees Chan glance at him for a little too long out of the corner of his eye, and immediately works on a smile. “I’m really looking forward to it. Sorry, I’m just tired from the flight.”

Immediately, politely, there are three offers for him to wash up and take a nap, an offer that he takes up gratefully.

He slips into an unfamiliar bed beside Felix after a shower, listening to the muffled sounds of Chan’s family moving around downstairs, and lets out a quiet breath, staring up at the ceiling, unconsciously, privately, counting down the days till they’re home.

*

Woojin tries his best. He really does. He knows how much this trip means to Chan, knows how much this means to Felix.

And of course, Australia does have its moments, like the stack of pancakes at the diner with the fist-sized knob of butter after that life-threatening expedition to the open zoo, and the sunset on Bondi Beach where Woojin got burnt to a crisp, and the entire rack of rosemary lamb that Chan’s dad had casually whisked onto a grill on the third night, spoilt only marginally by the way one of Chan’s friends kept doing blow-by-blow replays of his poor English.

He knows this is the happiest Chan and Felix have been in a while.

To be perfectly honest, Woojin thinks he’s doing a really good job at pretending how much he wants to be here until Chan pulls him aside one night in the kitchen, when Felix is in the living room playing with Hannah and Lucas.

“Are you okay?” Chan asks, thumb rubbing little circles into Woojin’s palm.

“Yes,” Woojin says, compensating for his terrible lying skills by taking a long drink of Mama Bang’s homemade lemonade.

The other man snorts, lifting a hand and threatening to tip the bottle into Woojin’s face. “Woojin, you can’t lie to me, we’re married.”

Woojin narrowly avoids choking on high-quality lemonade, and puts the glass bottle down. “No, really. I loved the,” he struggles. “The zoo.”

“Really? Because I’ve never heard you swear like you did when that kangaroo ran at you.”

Woojin puts his face in his hands, trying to re-suppress that memory. “Chan.”

The other man is smiling a little. “Felix wouldn’t stop asking me what those words meant.”

“I mean it. I’m happy,” Woojin sighs, taking another drink of lemonade (it’s a really good lemonade). “It was nice going to all the places where you grew up, that old bowling alley and the swimming pool, and it was great to see Felix so happy when he got to feed that giraffe-…”

“Even when he wiped giraffe saliva all over your face?”

“_Chan_-…”

“I’m sorry,” Chan grins, grabbing his hands and swaying them. “I love you. A lot. You know that right?”

“Hm.”

“Thank you for trying,” the other man murmurs, leaning in to press a kiss on Woojin’s cheek. Woojin makes the mistake of looking into Chan’s eyes, soft and bright, and gets that familiar feeling again, like he’s falling forward really fast with little to no regard for where he’s going. “It means a lot to me.”

“I know,” Woojin mumbles, because he does. It’s the only reason why he’s here. It’s all he’s been going off of for the past week.

“You’re free tomorrow,” Chan says suddenly, pulling away. There’s a spark in his eyes, the same one Woojin used to see a lot more when they were dating. “And so am I.”

The other man opens his mouth, then closes it. “And Felix?”

“Felix has plans,” Chan says importantly. “Mom’s taking him to the Sealife Aquarium and the playground, before trying to fatten him up for slaughter with her cooking. So,” he murmurs, grinning. “We should do something.”

Woojin raises a brow, feeling a small pang of disappointment that he won’t be around for the fattening up. “You planned this.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did,” Chan looks pleased about it, and Woojin kind of wants to kiss him. “Pack a change of clothes and leave it in the car. And give me some lemonade.”

“No, it’s mine. Go get your own.”

*

Through the next day, Woojin wonders if they’ve stepped into a time machine, going back half a decade to when they were dating. If it weren’t for the heart-stopping periodic urges to check Chan’s phone for Bang Family updates about Felix, he’d almost believe it.

They’ve had Chan-imposed schedules the past few days, but today he just drives them to a bustling street and they end up walking, hand in hand, stopping whenever they see something interesting.

First they go to a café, then a museum, then to a plaza for some shopping. Then Chan surprises him by driving them to a hotel, some cosy contemporary little thing on a heritage street with deep red upholstery and gold-lined carpets and most importantly, a king-sized bed with about a thousand pillows and sheets that sink all the way in when you lie down.

Predictably, they don’t emerge until about dinnertime, when Chan drags Woojin to a seafood bistro by the beach, where they’d gone on their last night of Woojin’s first visit to Sydney. It’s a shame that Woojin can barely pay attention to his $60 surf ‘n turf with the way Chan keeps leaning over the little table and murmuring in his ear, the way Chan blushes a dark red all the way to his ears when Woojin gives up and grabs his thigh under the table, scarring a nearby waiter.

It’s an hour after midnight, when they’re wrapped up meditatively in bathrobes on the darn amazing bed, having given up on Chan’s dream of acquainting themselves with every available surface in the hotel room upon reaching the realisation that they’re not as young as they used to be, listening to the hum of the air-conditioning and the lively bustle of the streets below them, that Woojin relents.

It’s true.

He doesn’t have to be somewhere he knows to feel like he’s home.

*

Woojin doesn’t exactly forget the T-minus Korea countdown, but to his surprise, there’s someone who remembers it better than he does.

He walks into the bedroom the morning before they fly back to find Felix sprawled out on a luggage, looking a bit green. He’s been on and off the whole of yesterday, and he and Chan had spent the entire night worrying about food poisoning.

“I want to go home,” the little boy announces quietly, when Woojin picks him up and starts walking around the room. “I want Vegemite bread.”

“You’ve been eating Vegemite bread every _day_, Felix.”

Felix turns his head stubbornly. “It’s not _real_ Vegemite bread. It has the brown parts. And there's no seaweed soup.”

Woojin just laughs, rocking the boy gently, wondering if he'll ever be able to find any other kid in Korea or Australia who religiously eats that combination for breakfast. “We’ll be back in Korea tomorrow, Lixie.”

“But I want to go home _now._”

“We can’t change our flights, Lixie,” Woojin laughs, swaying him gently, walking over to their bed and picking up Felix’s stuffed koala to give to him. “How’s this,” he sits down, Felix on his knee, the little boy inhaling his soft toy miserably. “Don’t you think that when Appa, Daddy and Felix are together, home can be anywhere?”

Felix sighs contemplatively. Woojin has to bite his lip to stop laughing. “Appa, what does that mean?”

“You’ll understand when you’re older,” Woojin pats the boy’s head, kissing his crown. “Now how about we start packing our luggage? I think we’ll need a whole extra carrier bag just for the toys Grandma gave you.”

*

Woojin misses a lot of things about Korea. Work isn’t one of them.

He sighs, punching a couple of buttons on a photocopier and waiting for the machine to spit out his papers. His mind wanders to Chan and Felix during the wait, as it typically does, and the swimming lesson tonight, and where they’ll go for dinner afterwards. Maybe the samgyetang diner on the next street, or-…

“Hyung, what’s that?”

Woojin looks at Jungwoo, standing at the neighbouring copier with a bemused look on his face, then at his papers. “Accrual documents?”

“No, hyung, what you were singing,” the other man scrunches up his face. “What’s a _banana boat_?”

The older man groans, rubbing a knuckle into his temple. “Ah, sorry, it’s been stuck in my head for ages. It’s just a dumb ad jingle.”

“I’ve never heard it before.”

“It’s from Australia,” Woojin says darkly, and Jungwoo full-out cackles.

“_Well then_,” he shrugs exaggeratedly, tapping his card against the copier reader. “You know hyung, I’ll never understand how you do it. Being with someone so different.”

“Yeah. I didn’t think I would either,” Woojin grabs his papers. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

Jungwoo scoffs, ducking the outstretched hand to mess up his hair. “I’m _one year_ younger than you, hyung!”

Woojin doesn’t think much of it until he lunches with the other man the next day, and Jungwoo starts humming when they’re in line.

“Are you…” he starts incredulously. “Singing the banana boat song?”

Jungwoo sighs in defeat. “This is your fault, hyung.”

It gets progressively funnier through the week, until Woojin walks by a temporary admin staff at HR doing data entry, whom he has never spoken to in his life, humming that familiar tune. Then it’s just downright ridiculous.

“You and Lixie are like a virus, you know that?” he says, slipping under the sheets with Chan that night.

“Love you too babe,” Chan mumbles sleepily, pulling him closer, octopus-wrapping him like he's a bolster.

“Yeah,” Woojin grumbles, unreasonably comfortable. The silence sets in for a moment, broken only by the hum of the air-conditioner, before he replies. “Love you.”

Half-asleep, then, Chan smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> well that was a ride
> 
> hope you guys like this part of the series~ i wanted to try out writing in as many different perspectives as possible while maintaining integrity in the series, so i hope this one felt alright ;u;
> 
> just wanted to take this time to say! thanks for always being patient with updates and continuing to comment, especially @ those who always appear in my inbox whatever fic i update (i remember your usernames!! it's in a special place in my heart!!) seeing your comments really gives me the strength not just to keep on writing but to keep on-ing, in general, if that makes any sense
> 
> will be trying my best to work on surrender now, and i'm also about halfway through a minsung soulmate au that i'm holding back from posting until it's finished haha, so yes! see you guys again soon, please take care and stay healthy!
> 
> talk with me pls! ;u;  
personal twt: @goldengyeom  
writing twt: @symmetrophobic (locked for qrts but i will accept your follow!!) ೕ(•̀ᴗ•́) 


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